Do we like them?

Do we like Joe Hill?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up and the case against him is widely doubted, but our reading was thin, so we hold back from a higher number.

Joe Hill was a Swedish-born songwriter for the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, who became the labour movement's best-known martyr. He was executed by firing squad at the Utah State Prison on 19 November 1915, after a conviction that has been argued over ever since.

Supporters then and since have argued he was an innocent man framed by the mining industry for his union work. Hill was convicted and sentenced to death. The archives hold thousands of letters and petitions sent to Governor William Spry protesting the conviction and the sentence.

Even President Woodrow Wilson stepped in, and Governor Spry still resisted the appeals and let the execution go ahead. The Wobblies treated Hill as a martyr from that day on. Where you land on his guilt depends on whether you read that circumstantial case as enough or as a stitch-up of a union man.

On the harm test, nothing turned up in the pages we could read: no hateful words, no conspiracy theories, no company he kept that raises a flag. The honest gap is that we couldn't open many full articles on his songs and politics this round, so that verdict rests on a short record. That's why the score sits in the middle rather than up high.